I know it's a work of fiction and I shouldn't get quite so real-world about it, but there's a few things I'd like to get off my chest in regard to the bonkbuster du jour Fifty Shades of Grey.

Firstly, it made me use the word "bonkbuster". That alone makes me angry for immediately honing into the gutter-press style of dialogue this book elicits in the most languid of writers looking for an opener.

Next, before I start banging on about the lame mono-plot, the repeated use of fireworks as a metaphor for the female climax or the searing annoyance of reading a book touted as a tome full to bursting with bondage and sexual power-play only to discover that there was absolutely none of either in the whole damn show, let me congratulate E.L. James on getting the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy published in its final incarnation at all.

In its first guise the story was internet-published fan fiction based on Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewarts Twilight characters. From there, following objections to the overtly sexual nature of the story, James removed it from Twilight fan fiction websites, rechristened the main protagonists and rewrote the trilogy.

Who knows whether James had any idea of the imminent success of the story? For my part, I doubt she had even an inkling of what was in store. The stories are works of basic erotic fiction: centred entirely on the two main characters, with no sub-plot, revealing little of their lives outside their immediate situation. It's the type of writing produced effortlessly by jobbing erotica writers since time immemorial with little or no aspiration to any great publishing success. It's horny pap, designed to induce satiation via the horniest muscle of them all.

That it's ascended thus far is incredible. That James need never write another word elicits the kind of grudging respect slowly turning me from incredulously puce to enviously emerald. Lady, here's to you (raises glass of something that Christian Grey would undoubtedly deem undrinkable).

Now, to the story itself. I write only, here, of the first of the trilogy: Fifty Shades of Grey. I happened upon it among the paperbacks available in the "leave one, take one" honesty-box library of my holiday villa. I love discovering books this way: their spines bent back, the glue rendered almost desiccated by the mediterranean sun and the ghosts of holidaymakers past evident in greasy, sun-creamed fingerprints.

I'm gonna read it, I said to myself in mock-horror, any pretence of literary pretension swept under the sun lounger (I've had Gorbachev's memoirs in my bookcase for around twenty years and never managed to get past the introduction, and my father has finally given up thrusting Proust in my general direction).

I scurried past the first thirty pages, recalling from my earliest forays into Riders and Hollywood Wives that the sex doesn't really get started until around that point. Shame on me. I felt like a nasty little cheater. If I was to have anything pertinent to say about Fifty Shades of Grey, I should at least have the decency to read it properly.

So I went back to the beginning.

My first complaint came early. Here's our heroine, Anastasia, she could have two heads for all we know such is the lack of descriptive content about her. Perhaps I was missing the point and, maybe, in deigning to eliminate her visually, James is reducing Anastasia to the base elements required for her part in the story: a mere bucket of sexual organs.

As for the penis at the party, it's suggested that Christian Grey is a man of such dashing good-looks that women melt into sickening puddles of moosh at the mere sight of him. Well, I can't say much about that either. For me, at least, how attractive a person may or may not be hinges on slightly more than them having "copper coloured hair" (although, admittedly, a touch of the ginge is a good starting point) and prominent hip bones: a line repeated to such an extent that I ended up visualising him as Lily Cole - all jutting and strutting.

So, these two, largely faceless, characters talk to each other. Or rather they're doing something closely approximating conversation, but never really managing to say anything of any real value or purpose. This is where it became obvious that James was still thinking about both characters in their first incarnation as Pattinson and Stewart and keeping tight reins on the dialogue with a filmic quality in mind.

It doesn't work for a novel. The language employed is stilted and awkward to the point of embarrassment - it seems, even though they've only just met and are about to embark on the most intense relationship imaginable, they haven't got anything to say to one another. It's rootless, connectionless and floats aimlessly from one (apparently) wise-ass comment to the next. I can think of only one successful deployment of similar language from one medium to another: the Mike Nichols adaptation of Patrick Marber's "Closer". This play-t0-film whicked away any hint of thespian pretension by use of fully-rounded, empathy-building characterisation - something that Fifty Shades is missing right from the start.

Next, we come to the sex (by this point, I was ready to throw the book into the swimming pool and happily watch it drown). Keen as I am to nose into the folds of anything deemed perverse, I was hoping for a spot of intense scrutiny regarding the politics of power exchange relationships. Fat chance. As lacking as James had been in describing the physicality of either character, she REALLY went to town with the metaphors as they got down to business with barely a passing nod to the dastardly motivations of Mr Hip Bones or the emotional requirements of Anastasia.

Along with the jutting and strutting, he was now going for all-out rutting. On their first sexual encounter, this pair made glossy Hollywood porn seem deep and meaningful. I'm pretty sure I snorted with outright derision as Anastasia, up to that point a virgin with zero experience, delivered a deep-throat blow job to do Jenna Jameson proud. Mr Hip Bones exclaimed surprise at her lack of gag reflex. He wasn't the only one.

And this is where Fifty Shades began to unravel as quickly as the slipknots that didn't even feature in a book purported to overflow with bondage. Mr Hip Bones shows Anastasia his "red room of pain". If there were any more cliches stuffed into that particular chapter it would have been at the expense of leaving the only other chapter in which it were briefly mentioned devoid of its own tick-box quotient of banal bondage buzzwords. I must admit to speed-reading large sections in an attempt to claw back some of the precious holiday time I felt robbed of. By the time I reached the end Mr Hip Bones had essentially turned from the swaggering all-consuming dom to a hen-pecked, nag-frazzled depressive and Anastasia had morphed from a virginal and oh-so-kookily-clumsy college gal into the kind of demanding, whinging trout I wanted to ball-gag and wallop heartily with a gigantic leather paddle - which would at least serve to increase the actual BDSM content one hundredfold. In summation, dear reader, I bid you at your peril to see what you can extract from this measly exploration of a dysfunctional relationship between an emotionally unavailable copper-top with a vague pretence at a superiority complex and a dull whiner who should really have started off her sexual explorations by way of a quick fingering from the college jock on prom night.

Or, you could dispense with such a chore and instead read the excellent How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran: a treasure offered up by the holiday villa honesty library which held me rapt in its truthful simplicity and made me sad when the end came all too soon.

I get hung up on bits and pieces. Although not a hoarder, I find myself arbitrarily seized by the allure of small things, becoming instantly obsessed, before happily disposing of them without hesitation or regret.

An off-cut of gold ribbon sends me into a day-dreaming rapture, fancying I hear the whisper of Marie Antoinette's skirts and echoing giggles of courtly French. The mellow gleam from the pearlised flesh of a white aubergine, and the semi-hollow sound elicited by drumming my fingers along its length has transfixed me these past two days (its time with me is, alas, almost at an end as the idea of a goats cheese moussaka gains ground on the strange tactile glamour of this bizarre berry). A thick, creamy envelope of good quality card stock, lined with tissue paper is likely to send me into a sybaritic spasm.

I'm pretty sure I know what my problem is. I have no tenacity for the appreciation of anything requiring prolonged, diligent focus. The older I get, the less likely I am to read pounding works of literary importance or watch cinematic masterpieces over an hour and a half long. I don't enjoy music to any vast degree over and above the urge to dance (poorly and without much pretence at natural rhythm) or sing (terribly and devoid of tonal ability) along to it.

I've no patience for literature that delves microscopically into dates and grants necessity to the naming of many characters. I've lost count of the number of books I've started, only to cast aside after the first chapter, feeling unfairly weighted by a procession of protagonists who's minor, fleeting appearance warrants yet another list of names, dates and connections.

I gorge on short, intense bursts of information: documentaries, both singular and serial. Paragraphs, or even just sentences, chosen at random from a variety of sources. I take quick visual snapshots on a visit to an art gallery or museum, then fixate on two or three pieces (or the fixtures and fittings, other visitors and their conversations), and wonder at companions reading every little piece of information alongside each exhibit.

I'm more interested in artists than their art. Sure, a Velasquez or a Caravaggio will obsess me for a time, then I ditch them in favour of a particular Bacon, or a hastily scribbled drawing on a torn piece of paper I found in the street. I like snippets and facts, the minutiae of daily life and viewing every action separately and distinctly: one task and the movement to complete it. Multi-tasking is a horrible, panicked state by comparison.

I love ritualistic behaviour: tying a bow, making sure the loops are even and the tails of equal length. It's one of my favourite things to do for instant artistic gratification. I'm no artist, I can't draw or paint and I may be able to shape a mean meatball, but attempting to create anything approximating sculpture would be futile.

Intangible, unquantifiable notions leave me breathless: ideas and fancies, questions for which there are no answers, waking dreams that track across our thoughts every day. Those not-entirely-sentient synaptic flashes that make me wonder what a peacock smells like and ache for a feather or two. Just a simple thing to look at and contemplate... at least for a little while until the next obsession strikes.

I'm one. A genuine dyed in the wool clumsy bastard. Already today I've burnt one finger taking a hot tray from the oven and slammed another finger in a drawer. There's that sickening, fanny-tightening moment as my body anticipates just how painful this may or may not be before the pain actually kicks in and I pour forth a honking volley of the rudest expletives in my vocabulary.

If there's something to be spilt or tripped over I'll find it - a tiny incline in an otherwise perfectly flat landscape, you betcha I'll find it and splay myself prone attempting to master that which the vast majority of the human race find unspeakably simple: putting one fucking foot in front of the other.

Time and time again I promise myself I'll slow down, consider exactly what I'm doing and not carry a cup of tea balanced precariously atop two bendy magazines and a large pile of clean laundry.

Many times, having cried hot, self-pitying tears of strangled, agonised frustration, I've vowed to check for random blobs of slippery conditioner waiting, with naughty glee in the bath from the last time I showered, to send me crashing in a naked, shrieking heap nose-first into the taps.

I've got so many scars on my forearms from various accidents with the iron and the oven that it appears I've turned self-harming into my day job. I'm single handedly keeping Bio Oil from bankruptcy - for no good reason either, because it doesn't help that I can burn myself five times in exactly the same place.

I'm despairingly sick of myself for being such a thumping, graceless twat. I can't walk through a doorway without bashing my shoulder on the doorframe, like some kind of hulking yeti. Every single time I open the door of my car I break a nail, despite knowing that the handle sticks halfway.

I swear to christ that if I stub my toe one more time on the corner of the bedpost nearest the wardrobe I'll throw the whole goddamn bed off the balcony in flames while laughing like a maniac.

There is but one thought which comforts me in all of this: my darling boy, my soon-to-be-husband and the one who holds my fretful heart when nothing can save me from myself... he's even clumsier than I.

Okay, okay, before anyone gets all unnecesary I'm not actually suggesting we take to Twitter and Facebook and wherever else Shirley Cole has set herself up for the rest of us mere mortals (or "civilians" as Cole's similarly famous-for-fuck-all forerunner and champion narcissist Elizabeth Hurley would prefer to label us) to take pot-shots at her non-existent talents.

Cyber bullying is a strange notion. It's a bit like accidentally watching an episode of Eastenders and then feeling anything from mild slight through to horrific and all-consuming self-loathing that we've allowed our emotive state to be altered by a bunch of people we've never met, will never meet and don't give a shit about.

True enough, the only reason I'd ever watch an episode of Eastenders would be if I'd broken my back and couldn't reach the remote control. Even then, I'd scream loudly until my vocal chords were reduced to shredded, bloody tatters for someone to come and relieve me of having to endure even thirty seconds of it.

There are, however, two facets to Cole's assertion that people who judge her hair and appearance or refer to her as "fat" are "evil".

Firstly, anyone who calls Shirley "fat" is most certainly not evil. At worst, they are stupid and at the very least can be accused of being incredibly, possibly dangerously, short-sighted. One would hope that they are not in charge of any form of heavy machinery, motor vehicles or tasked with ushering schoolchildren safely across busy roads.

Secondly, I'd be really interested to know how one goes about getting nasty comments in front of the eyes of the celebrity for whom they're intended. Believe me, I've tried on countless occasions to vent my spleen at plenty of vacuous, fake, talentless pop stars and the obvious routes are barred at every turn by digital processes built to ensure they never have to know that a large portion of the population thinks they're unbearable arseholes.

Interestingly, however, Shirley may not be as stupid as she looks. I notice she's only publicly complaining about people slagging off her hair, or calling her fat. At least she was wise enough not to mention the insults containing more than a modicum of truth: she "sings" like a fox being buggered and has just the kind of misplaced confidence in her "talent" that makes people want to shoot her in the face the second she opens her mouth.

My conclusion: Shirley goes looking for all the terrible things people think about her. We're obviously only giving her what she already knows. Ipso facto: seek and ye shall find.